Hula Hoop co-creator has died
 

Hula Hoop, Frisbee co-creator dead
Digg del.icio.us Newsvine Reddit FacebookWhat's this?LOS ANGELES (AP) — Richard "Rich" Knerr is being remembered this week for creating a multimillion-dollar company out of slingshots, flying saucers and spinning hoops. But he did much more than that.
Knerr and his partner, Wham-O co-founder Arthur "Spud" Melin, specialized in fun with products like the Hula Hoop, the Slip 'N Slide, Silly String and the Super Ball, entertaining countless people from one end of the world to the other. They showed dogs a pretty good time, too, with another iconic Wham-O product, the Frisbee.

Knerr, who retired from the toy marketing business when he and Melin sold Wham-O in 1982, died Monday after suffering a stroke at his home in suburban Arcadia. He was 82.

Melin, his partner and lifelong friend, died in 2002.

"The company motto was 'Our Business is Fun,' and that really describes both Dad and Spud," Knerr's son, Chuck Knerr, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "They were two boys who just loved to have fun."

They let the whole country in on the fun in 1958 when they began selling round, plastic hoops at 98 cents apiece. People snapped them up by the millions, as seemingly everyone in America that summer attempted to spin the things around their waists, hips, necks or knees.

"No sensation has ever swept the country like the Hula Hoop," Richard A. Johnson wrote in his 1985 book "American Fads."

Just as quickly, however, the fad ended.

"By the time September rolled around you couldn't give them away because every household in America had two and they lasted forever," Chuck Knerr recalled his father telling him.

It didn't matter because not long after that the Frisbee, which had been introduced the year before, began to catch on — and not just with people. Dogs loved to play with it too.

One such animal, Ashley Whippet, became a celebrity in the 1970s because of his astounding ability to chase and catch the things.

Because dogs tended to chew up Frisbees and people tended to lose them, they proved a much more lucrative product for Wham-O than Hula Hoops had.

Knerr and Melin went into business for themselves in 1948, making $2 a day selling slingshots they made out of old orange crates in Knerr's garage. They named their fledgling company after the sound Melin liked to make every time he fired a slingshot.

The pair met by chance as teenagers outside a Pasadena movie theater. They went into business together because Melin raised falcons and they used homemade slingshots to fire meatballs at young birds to teach them to dive for prey.

Their slingshots proved so popular that their barber suggested they place an ad in a magazine and start selling them by mail order.

"It sounds strange to say it now but at the time nobody ever made and sold a slingshot," Chuck Knerr said. "They were always homemade."

Soon the boys were bringing home orders from the post office by the sack full, allowing them to pay off the bandsaw they had bought at a Sears store for $7 down.

Knerr would say years later that he discovered the Hula Hoop while at a sporting goods trade show in Chicago. An Australian man, during a conversation in the men's room, told him of a fitness craze sweeping his country and agreed to send him a few of the exercise tools.

Knerr and Melin were at the beach one day when they saw a former Air Force pilot named Fred Morrison playing with the flying disc he'd made. They bought the rights to it, modified it and changed its name from Pluto Platter to Frisbee, naming it after a comic strip character Knerr liked.

Wham-O introduced the Slip 'N Slide in 1961, the Limbo Game in 1962 and the Super Ball in 1966. Silly String came along in 1972 and the introduction of the Hacky Sack in 1983 created another craze.

As the years passed and Wham-O became a brand recognized the world over, its founders continued to operate it as a small business based in the suburban San Gabriel Valley. They sold it to Kransco Group Companies in 1982. Mattel bought the company from Kransco in 1994 and sold it to a group of investors in 1997. It is now based in Emeryville.

In addition to his son, Knerr is survived by his wife, Dorothy, daughters Melody Marquez and Lori Gregory, stepchildren Richard Enright and Jeanne Stokes and eight grandchildren.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Re: Hula Hoop co-creator has died
 

The Hula Hoop was one toy that I never quite got the hang of, but I did have some fun on the Slip-N-Slide as a kid. Reading the article certainly did bring back some really fun memories.

Re: Hula Hoop co-creator has died
 

Sad to hear. :( Gordon spoke many times about one of the first song he wrote which was about the hula hoop craze. "They were selling them by the millions." ~gl~

Re: Hula Hoop co-creator has died
 

You can listen to GL's comment on the "Hula Hoop Song" starting at 8:15...

http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-68-302-...t_songwriting/

"I guess I'm just a slob /and I'm gonna lose my job/'Cause I'm hula hula-hooping all the time." A Masterpiece.

The CBC also has "The Hula Hoop Craze Hits Canada" at
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-68-916-...la_hoop_canada

Re: Hula Hoop co-creator has died
 

Thanks for posting it Next Saturday. :)

Re: Hula Hoop co-creator has died
 

I had a love/hate relationship with the hula hoop, but eventually did get the hang of it. I'm still a big fan of the Super Ball. I'm sure there's at least 1/2 a dozen around somewhere here in the house (not including my son's).

There's lots of Frisbees too, I don't know where they all come from, but they're here. I think there are one or two in the car.

Re: Hula Hoop co-creator has died
 

I was really into the hula hoop when I was 9 or 10... the big one around the waist, as well as the small ones for the arms & legs. I got pretty good at it, but as an adult, I haven't been able to pick up the knack again, no matter how many times I've tried. So sad to hear of Mr. Knerr's passing :( (He was a regular patient at the hospital where I work, although I never met him personally.)

Re: Hula Hoop co-creator has died
 

I loved my hula hoop when I got the hang of it. I think that was about the time we all got skate boards in my family too. We all spent the whole summer putting Bactine and bandages on each other...lol.
Every dog I have ever had loved to play with frisbees. I know I still have a couple out in the garage. Pepper, the current dog, is a little old to run and jump but I know she still dreams about it.

Sorry to hear of his passing.

Re: Hula Hoop co-creator has died
 

i remember they used to have different flavours of the bigger variety - well in Australia, they did

Re: Hula Hoop co-creator has died
 

http://www.ilovehou.com/twonicknames...hulahooper.gifhttp://www.ilovehou.com/twonicknames.../hulahoop4.gif



• Saint John, N.B. holds the record for simultaneous Hula Hooping. According to The Guinness Book of World Records Record Breakers’ Club, 2,010 participants hooped together for two minutes in Saint John on Sept. 21, 1990.


• In the liner notes for the album Gordon Lightfoot: Songbook, Lightfoot reveals that the first song he wrote was about the Hula Hoop craze. Though this song was never recorded, an employee at BMI Canada encouraged him to continue writing.

Re: Hula Hoop co-creator has died
 

http://harvest.canadaeast.com/image....286&size=300x0

The Canadian Press

Studio in Essence hula exercise instructor Monique Ryan during a class

Hula hooping: a fun way to get fit

Class uses hoops to help trim abs, thighs, buttocks and arms

By Lois Legge

THE CANADIAN PRESS Published Tuesday February 19th, 2008

HALIFAX - Hula hoops are in full swing.
And there isn't a kid in sight.
Twenty- and 40-something hips swivel, dip and roll to a pop beat, sweat glistening as faces flush.
"There you go -- you got it!" instructor Monique Ryan encourages as she twirls tirelessly like some tiny tattooed spin top.
The newcomers try to keep up, whirling Ryan's handmade hoops -- bigger and heavier than the cheap plastic variety -- around their waists for as long as possible.
Eventually, all the hoops except Ryan's hit the floor.
But the effort, the Studio In Essence instructor assures them, pays off as about 100 calories are burned in 10 minutes.
Effective exercise doesn't have to move in a straight line or aerobic jump, Ryan, 25, says before class on a recent Saturday.
Hula hooping is a great abdominal workout, she says. And it trims thighs, buttocks and arms, too, while lifting the moods of young and older.
"At the end of the class, I have so much more energy than when I started," adds the petite instructor, whose classes have attracted everyone from junior high school students to people in their mid-50s since they started last fall.
Christina Cheung's daughter takes pole-dancing classes at the Halifax dance and fitness studio. Cheung saw Ryan, also a dancer with the Halifax troupe Pink Velvet Burlesque, demonstrate her hula moves before Christmas. And she was hooked.
Cheung, 54, bought a plastic hula hoop at a department store and started practising at home. But she says it was too light to stay up for long.
Ryan's hula hoops, made from industrial tubing and sold at the studio for $20, are a big help, says Cheung, a Halifax resident who grew up in Hong Kong and is getting a fresh taste of an old plaything.
"It's my first time. I never learned it, even in school. ... So I said, 'Oh, I'm so interested,'" Cheung says between deep breaths after class.
"It was a great, great ... workout," Shannon Nearing, 45, adds after almost an hour of swivelling single or double hoops, rolling the hoop around her hands and trying mid-circle dance moves that Ryan suggested.
"If you're going to work out, you may as well have fun doing it," Nearing says. "It should be fun. It shouldn't be torture."
And hula hooping, she says, is "just total fun."
Ryan thinks so, too, and she has brought what she says is a big Hollywood exercise craze to Halifax after trying it on her own.
"Hula hooping is so much fun that you don't really realize that you're exercising," she says. "So it's not like going to the gym and doing rep after rep."
Ryan says she got the idea after watching Cirque du Soleil performers work wonders with the childhood toy.
"I'm a performer, I'm a belly dancer, and I was just looking for something new to add to my performances and I was looking at Cirque du Soleil videos and I saw a contortionist hula hooping with, like, 20 hula hoops, and doing all these really neat things with hula hoops, and I thought, 'Wow, that's really cool. I want to try that.'"
Ryan can now do some really cool moves of her own, such as holding her hands on her head as she hoops, or double hooping, even hooping while dancing in what seems like a seamless swirl of motion.
"If you feel comfortable, try the tricks," she encourages her class at one point.
The dizzying, tiny dancer expertly leads and the novices follow in a still-awkward, slightly stilted parade of shimmies and swirls.
Soon, 45 minutes has slipped by. And Ryan tells the hoopers they've each burned about 450 calories. And she adds with a burst of energy and a smile: "I can't think of a more fun way to burn 450 calories."